A group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), called Equal Measures 2030, has published its 2024 SDG Gender Index report on Wednesday. It found that from 2019-2022, almost 1B women in 40% of countries faced declining or stagnating gender equality.
Between that period, according to the report, gender equality decined in 17 countries, remained the same in 36, made "some progress" in 45, and "fast progress" in 41. Based on these trends, it claims 68.9% of the world will ahve gender equality by 2030.
The road to global gender equality is darker than it has been in almost a decade. Not only have we seen women's rights deteriorate in countries like Afghanistan and Venezuela, but also in the US, where its high court stripped women of their national abortion rights. Across the world, women hold less wealth, education, and political power than men, not to mention their higher likelihood of facing violence. If this trend continues, it will take more than a century to reach full equality of the sexes.
These global reports are fraudlent. For example, one of them previously ranked Rwanda higher than the US because both genders facesfaced equal rates of poverty, illiteracy, and violence. But when women in wealthy and free Western countries choose to be mothers or decline to climb the corporate ladder, these NGOs claim those societies are falling backwards. Equality means allowing men and women to live how they want, not forcing them to achieve some abstract UN agenda.